


It'll Be Okay

by anythingbutplatonic



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 19:05:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4111720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutplatonic/pseuds/anythingbutplatonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An extension of 6x07 where Blaine returns home from packing his things at Dave’s apartment to discover his father has left his mother. What results a mother-and-son heart-to-heart about relationships, lost opportunities, and when it’s time to let go. Spoilers for 6x08. Fluff/hurt/comfort. Originally posted on Tumblr Feb 17th 2015.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It'll Be Okay

Going back to the apartment he had shared with Dave up until a couple of hours ago to pack his things was much more difficult than he had anticipated.

One, because the pain in his chest - in his heart - that had started to build when he’d seen Kurt leave with that older guy, Waldo or William or whatever his name was, had grown to an excruciating agony by the time he’d spent five minutes trying to get his old key to work in the lock, making it hard to breathe around the cracks that were starting to splinter in the carefully-mended chambers of the vital organ that Kurt had bruised so extensively when he’d broken up with Blaine almost a year ago. 

Second, because Dave was still there when he walked through the door, nursing a beer on the couch and flicking absently through the channels on the TV, and Blaine had hoped that he wouldn’t be, that he would be able to pack his stuff in the silence of an empty apartment and not have to make awkward small-talk or divulge the reason why he he looked - and felt - so miserable.

He ignored Dave as much as he could as he methodically moved through what was once  _their_  bedroom, putting his stuff into the boxes he’d picked up from the supermarket on his way. There wasn’t much of it, really, mostly clothes and other essential items, very few personal keepsakes or trinkets; he’d kept most of those at his parents’ house. On a subconscious level, he supposed it was because moving in with Dave had never felt like anything concrete, and so he hadn’t brought any of his more personal items with him into this new apartment. 

The act of folding, tucking, layering his clothes in the boxes and the small suitcase he had kept on top of the dresser calmed his mind, kept his thoughts away from Kurt and his date, from Kurt and the duet and the kiss after Rachel’s party, from Kurt rigging the Musical Wheel of Fortune (as much as he pretended otherwise) so that they would be paired together, from Kurt and his probing blue eyes and playful smile, from Kurt who had insisted that he was going to get Blaine back, from everything  _Kurt_.

In less than a few hours, he was done; everything neatly packaged in boxes, stuck with strong tape and neatly labelled.  _Clothes. Bowties. Shoes. Books._

 He was in the kitchen, getting into his coat, almost ready to leave, before he remembered the key he still had in his pocket.

He took it out and dropped it onto the counter, the clatter and jangle of metal on metal alerting Dave to his imminent departure.

“You’re leaving?”

“Uh, yeah. I thought - I should probably just get out of your hair, you know, out of sight, out of mind…” He was rambling, wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying. Dave frowned.

“Is something wrong?”

“No! No, I just - I’ll just go. I need to go…" 

An image flashed into his mind, of Kurt and his date, laughing and talking with Sam and Rachel, tipping their drinks together in a chorus of  _Cheers!_  and deciding whether to order the sharing platter or order their own individual appetizers. Kurt didn’t like sharing platters; he always insisted on ordering his own separate dish, and Blaine would always get something different, so that they could try each other’s, handing forkfuls of food across the table and giggling as they tried to feed each other the morsels of whatever it was they had ordered.

"Oh, well. Bye, then. And I hope it goes well with Kurt.” Dave said, the hint of a smile around his lips. Blaine’s heart clenched painfully in his chest;  _he doesn’t know_. 

He nodded, buttoned his coat against the chill, and and left the apartment, suitcase and boxes in tow, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat that arose as he walked to his car, loaded his things, and drove away.

***

Coming home felt….strange.

He hadn’t really been back to his parents’ house since moving in with Dave, and pulling into the driveway now filled him with a sense of dread he couldn’t quite put his finger on. The last time he had been here had been over the summer, in the first months after the break-up, when he’d been a virtual zombie, unresponsive and monosyllabic, not speaking because there was nothing he wanted to say. Not long after that, he’d been brought to a therapist at his mom’s insistence, and things had started getting better.

The only sound was the crunch of gravel under his feet and the wheels of his suitcase, the house dark. It wasn’t that late, but perhaps his parents had gone up to bed already, and wouldn’t be there to greet him when he walked through the door.

He still had his key, but the door was unlocked; he opened it smoothly, treading carefully inside, where the hallway was in total darkness. 

“Mom? Dad?”

Curious at the lack of life - maybe his parents  _had_  gone up to bed - he made his way to the kitchen, leaving his stuff just outside the door, and flicked on the light.

And found his Mom sitting at the kitchen table with her knees drawn up to her chin, dressed in a raggedy sweater and yoga pants, her feet bare. When he got closer, he saw that her hair was falling out of its usual smart chignon and falling around her face, which was pale and tired-looking; and feathery smears of mascara clung to the edges of her eyes, bloodshot and red-rimmed.

“Mom?”

It took a few moments for her to respond; she jerked as if woken suddenly from a deep sleep, rubbing at her eyes and leaving black streaks across her temples. 

“Blaine? Honey, is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he replied, shrugging off his coat and throwing it over the counter. “Why - where you sitting in the dark? Where’s dad?”

“He’s gone.”

This brought Blaine up short. He paused in the act of fetching a glass of water, staring. “What do you mean, gone?”

“He left. Packed his bags, told me it was over, drove away. And I - I - I  _tried_  to get him to s-stay, I really tried but he just -  _left_. He  _left_. He left me, left  _both_  of us, and I couldn’t even convince him to - to -” She grabbed fistfuls of her hair and pulled, yanking the pins from it and letting them scatter across the table. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t make him stay.”

The lump in his throat rose suddenly, and was very painful, too painful to speak around; the hand holding the glass shook, and he put it down on the edge of the sink, feeling his eyes burn for the second time that day. He tried to formulate a coherent thought in his mind, but came up empty. 

His dad, gone. His Mom, crying in the dark, alone. And he hadn’t been there.

He was the world’s worst son.

Blinking rapidly, he finally managed to find his voice. “Does - does Cooper know?”

His Mom shook her head. “He called earlier, and I hung up the phone. On my own son! I hung up, because I couldn’t tell him that his father had left. What kind of mother am I?”

Just for something to do with his hands, Blaine started making coffee, loading the filter and getting mugs and spoons. It was something routine, mechanistic, something that he didn’t have to think about too much, and it kept his nerves from fraying as the full weight of recent events caught up with him and pressed down on his chest, cutting off his breathing, making everything hurt. Kurt and the duet and the kiss and Dave and Kurt again and now…this. It was all too much. Much too much. 

Just as well he was in therapy. He was going to need it after this.

When the coffee was ready, he brought the mugs to the table, sitting himself across from his Mom, who accepted her mug with shaking hands. Stray tears clung to her cheeks, but she didn’t move to wipe them away. 

“I broke up with Dave today,” Blaine said. “This afternoon, actually. Kurt and I…had a moment at Rachel’s party, after our duet, and I kissed him and Dave somehow figured it out and said that I still loved him and that I’d never stopped, and that we should call it quits and I agreed. He said our time was up.”

“And then…I went to McKinley, to tell Kurt that I - that I loved him,  _really_  loved him, and he was there. With another guy, and they were going on a double date with Sam and Rachel, and I felt so  _stupid_  afterwards, like, what was I thinking? He’s obviously moved on, because I had moved on, and now I don’t  _want_  to move on any more and he’s….riding off into the sunset without me. Again. And it hurts. It really, really hurts, because I love him - I love him so much, and now - now everything’s back to square one again.”

He wasn’t sure when in his little speech that the tears he’d been holding in since seeing Kurt with Walter - Walter! That’s what the guy’s name was - spilled over and ran down his cheeks and into his sweater, but he was aware when he was finished that he was crying, and his nose running in a pathetic way, and he probably looked a mess but his Mom looked worse. 

“You know, I’d planned to have more kids after you were born,” his Mom said suddenly, breaking the silence, her voice hoarse and timid. “I’d wanted to give you another brother or sister, or maybe more than one, but I couldn’t. There were complications when I had you, and when you were six months old, I had to go into the hospital, and they did an emergency hysterectomy and took everything out. And I couldn’t have children any more, You and Cooper - you were all I had, were all I was ever going to have, and I love you both so much.” She furiously wiped away the fresh tears that tracked their way down her cheeks with the sleeve of her sweater. “Even if your dad doesn’t any more, I still love you.”

“Why did you never tell us you had surgery?” Blaine asked. “Me and Cooper, I mean. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t want to upset you,” his Mom said. “I thought that if I never mentioned it, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. And you were so small, and Cooper was only ten, and he wouldn’t have understood what was happening. So I never told you. But I’ve always regretted not giving the two of you the big family you deserved. The kind of family that I wanted, that your dad wanted. Maybe that’s why he became so resentful of me.”

“That’s not true,” Blaine replied immediately. “You don’t know that.”

“You don’t have to defend my honour, Blaine. I know I’m not perfect, and that sometimes I get things wrong, but I always thought he’d love me, even if I did cause a small house fire once trying to make Mac ‘n Cheese when you were seven.”

Blaine smiled at the memory; the sight of the kitchen full of smoke and his mother frantically trying to stamp out the flames had made him laugh, when he should have been scared. He remembered staring at the scene from the stairs, his face pressed against the wooden railings, until Cooper came and convinced him to go back upstairs and play with his toys.

“I always thought Kurt would love me, too,” Blaine said sadly. “But maybe I was wrong about that.”

“You did your best, baby. You tried, and it didn’t work out. Sometimes things don’t always. But the important thing is that you tried.”

“Better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?" 

His Mom tipped her mug in his direction before taking a sip. "That’s how the saying goes.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know if I want to be one of those people any more. If you never had something, you can’t miss it. If I’d never met Kurt…”

“You wouldn’t be the kind, generous, caring, compassionate, incredible young man who’s sitting in front of me today,” his Mom finished for him. “He changed you, Blaine, whether you realize it or not. And maybe it hurts now, but maybe it won’t in the future, when you can appreciate the good things he did for you rather than the bad things he did that hurt you.”

“Is that how you feel about dad? That you’ll eventually appreciate the good memories and not think about the bad ones so much?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But I have to hope, because otherwise, no-one would ever move on from the things that happened to them.”

“So you’re saying I should let go of Kurt?”  _I don’t want to do that. Not now, not ever_. _Please don’t say I should_.

“I’m saying that you need to do what’s best for you. And if letting Kurt go is what’s best, then I think that’s what you should do.”

“Are you going to let go of dad?”

His Mom hugged her mug of coffee to her chest. “I don’t know.”

“Do you love him?”

His Mom nodded. “Yes, Oh, yes, I do.”

Blaine sat back in his chair, trying to process what it was that had taken place around him in the space of a few days. 

“I love Kurt, too,” he said. “I don’t want to give up on him.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” his Mom replied, “but be careful, baby. Just be careful. Do that for me. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Draining her mug, his Mom got up from the table and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. He instinctively leaned into her touch, the way he had done as a kid when he was scared or upset, pressing his face into the fabric of her sweater. It smelled like lotion and old perfume and that strange smell that was always around department stores, musty and slightly clinical. 

“I love you, baby.”

His voice muffled, he replied, “I love you too, Mom.”

“It’ll be okay,” she reassured him. “Things will get better. It’ll work out, you’ll see." 

But was she reassuring him, or herself?

Maybe it was both.

Maybe it didn’t matter.

He got up from the table and followed his Mom upstairs, where he didn’t bother to change his clothes; he simply fell into his old bed fully-clothed, shoes and all. The familiar feel of the sheets and the soft pillows under his head meant that he was asleep within minutes, unaware that his Mom had returned downstairs carrying a blanket, intending to sleep on the couch because she couldn’t bare to be in the same bed she had shared with her husband the very previous night. 

If things were going to be okay, they didn’t have to be for  _her_. If she could sacrifice her own happiness for that of her son, that was what she wanted the most. 

Let her be in pain; Blaine deserved to be happy more than she did.


End file.
